It goes without saying that banners are pretty useless if you can’t hang them somewhere. That’s where grommets (not to be confused with Gromit) come in. Are you about to design a banner and planning to mark the location of the grommet holes by hand? Then you’re making things way harder for yourself than necessary.
Grommets are used for shower curtains, tarps, your shoe laces … and for signage and banners. They’re the rings that reinforce the holes used to hang up a sign or banner, preventing the material from fraying or tearing. Which, of course, you already know. However, what many print vendors don’t know – or fail to acknowledge – is that marking the locations of the grommet holes by hand after the sign or banner has been printed is entirely unnecessary, not to mention cost-inefficient.
There really is no need to add grommet marks by hand anymore these days. No worries, you can still have a blast hammering away at them with a grommet gun if you want. But there’s no need to measure and mark their exact location manually if you have software like i-cut Suite in place. Just think of all the precious time you’ll save and errors you’ll no longer make! Thank goodness for technology, right?
However small they may be, grommets will detract from any design if you’re not careful. Perfectionist signage designers know that there are different types of grommets: there’s rubber, plastic and metal grommets, each with their own advantages – and colors. While metal grommets are more durable than their rubber and plastic counterparts, their colors are usually limited to silver and brass, whereas rubber and plastic tend to be available in a much wider array of hues. Good to know: since grommets are placed in the hem of your sign or banner, don’t let your design extend all the way to the edges.
Automate. Connect. Accelerate.